


In Dust

by Ori_Cat



Category: Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Reposted following reviewal, i don't know if this counts as necrophilia or not, they literally just kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2019-03-31 01:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13964040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: Inspired by a prompt seen on Tumblr: “Imagine your OTP in hell.”All things considered, this is probably not what they meant.





	In Dust

That is where they meet. 

* * *

The sword comes down, blood for blood, and he does his best not to flinch away, not to want to live, because this is _right_ , this is _just_ \- 

And death is cold, a damp, numbing, beautiful welcoming cold, twin to the one inside him. And she is there, to say “Welcome,” and lead him to her hall and hearth and table. 

(They are cousins, technically, so he is seated at her side. He does not think much of it, at the time.) 

* * *

What do they care for the feuds of their fathers, of their brothers? What do they care for oaths broken and what is just and vengeful and right? They, who have been hammered into weapons for their fathers to wield against one another and strike from each other’s hands. 

Here, in the damp, in the cold, their sharp edges turn blunt and crumble to rust. 

* * *

“Why do you love me?” he asks her once. “I am nothing. I am a murderer.” 

She wraps her arms around his waist, rests her chin in the hollow of his collarbone. “My land is full of murderers,” she says, her breath cool on his cheek, “and it is full of nothing. Why should I not love the things I already possess?” 

* * *

“Why do you love me?” she asks him once. “I am monstrous. I am not beautiful.” 

His fingers still where he has been running them through her hair (red, befitting the daughter of Fire and granddaughter of Lightning, though it would matter little to him) and he laughs. 

“You think,” he says, and his fingers trace the line of her eyebrow, nose, the edge of her lip, “that that matters to me?” And he kisses her. 

It tastes like wreck and rot and dead things. (He should know. He, in whose hands plants melt to slime, with ice crystals piercing their cells; fish suffocate in the slush that once was a pond; men’s fingers blacken and fall from their hands.) 

(He likes it.) 

* * *

There is no sunlight here. They neither of them miss it, for they neither of them knew it, truly. 

* * *

Her hall empties, and they do not go. The worlds burn, and yet they do not go, for what do they care for the feuds of their fathers and of their brothers? 

When the new world rises, fair and green, then they will go, hand in hand and laughing through the gold rustle of the grass.


End file.
